Benjamin Jones named Regents' Lecturer
Departmental News
Posted: June 10, 2025
Benjamin Jones has been chosen by the College of Arts & Sciences as one of two 2025-2027 Regents' Lecturers. Dr. Jones will receive a stipend for the next three years and will always keep the title of Regents' Lecturer.
Regents’ Lecturer is a special title bestowed on selected tenured Associate Professors who, in the judgment of the Dean and on the advice of a faculty selection committee, merit recognition of their accomplishments as teachers, scholars and leaders both in university affairs and in their national and international professional communities.
Dr. Jones has established himself as a nationally and internationally recognized leader in environmental economics by investigating previously unrecognized pathways between the environment and human health, and by developing causality tests for previously recognized environment-health correlations. Dr. Jones has 44 peer-reviewed publications—including 19 sole-authored articles—in top environmental economics and other high-impact journals.
Early in his career, Dr. Jones constructed and numerically simulated the very first bioeconomic-health model on invasive species. This work established a precedent for incorporating human health into classic natural resource management models, a true merging of environmental economics with epidemiology. Dr. Jones has since opened other new areas of research on the interconnections between human health and the environment. These areas include the effects on human health and wellbeing of urban trees, wildfire, night skies, dust storms, prescribed burns, deforestation, algal blooms and lakes.
In addition, Dr. Jones and his colleagues Dr. Berrens and Dr. Goodkind were among the first to recognize the outsize energy and pollution costs of Bitcoin mining. In a series of papers, the team estimated the health impacts and economic damages associated with Bitcoin-produced pollution, which they found to exceed those of gold mining and crude oil production. The Bitcoin work has received a great deal of attention from both academics and policymakers. Dozens of media reports have featured the work, and Routledge recently published the body of this work as a book.
Dr. Jones’ research is distinguished by its quality, as evidenced by numerous publications in high-impact journals; its originality, as demonstrated by Jones’ uncanny talent for opening new avenues of research; its innovation, as demonstrated by the merging of economics with epidemiology and biosystems knowledge; and significant impact, as evidenced by the number of citations, significant media interest, and production of damages estimates that have attracted the attention of officials at the World Health Organization and the US Environmental Protection Agency.
Dr. Jones is also an accomplished teacher. He consistently receives highly positive evaluations from students, who highlight his engaging teaching methods, clear communication, and supportive approach. He also successfully teaches interdisciplinary courses, where he integrates diverse perspectives and practical applications. His recent initiatives in course development and online teaching further showcase his commitment to enhancing student learning and adapting to new educational modalities.
Dr. Jones also has a strong record of mentorship. He has mentored students nationally through two initiatives for increasing diversity in Economics: the American Economics Association (AEA) Committee on the Status of LGBTQ+ Individuals in the Economics Profession and the international Association of Environmental and Resource Economics (AERE) Scholars Program. As the department’s Graduate Director since the beginning of this academic year, he is now the de facto mentor for all of our 40 graduate students. Our students benefit especially from his experiences as a first-generation college student and as a member of the LGBTQ+ community.
Finally, Dr. Jones brings his forethought and focus, so evident in his research and teaching, to his position as Graduate Director. In this role, he led a promotion effort that resulted in the largest applicant pool we have had in recent memory, and he is a calm and reassuring presence in dealing with student issues.
Congratulations to Dr. Jones on this well-deserved honor!
